High Five (9 page)

"I'm going after Briggs," I said. "You want to ride shotgun?"

"Sure," Lula said, pulling a sweatshirt over her head. "Better than sitting around here. It's damn boring in here today." She had keys in her hand. "And I'm driving. You have a pipsqueak sound system in that Buick, and I need Dolby. I need mood music. I gotta get myself ready to kick some butt."

"We're not kicking butt. We're finessing."

"I could do that, too," Lula said.

I followed Lula out the door to her car. We buckled ourselves in, the CD player clicked on, and the bass almost lifted us off the ground.

"So what's the plan?" Lula asked, pulling into Briggs' parking lot. "We need a plan."

"The plan is that we knock on his door and lie."

"I could get into that," Lula said. "I like to lie. I could lie your ass off."

We crossed the lot and took the stairs. The hall was empty, and there was no noise coming from Briggs' apartment.

I flattened against the wall, out of sight, and Lula knocked twice on Briggs' door.

"How's this?" she asked. "I look okay? This here's my nonthreatening look. This look says, Come on, motherfucker, open your door."

If I saw Lula on the other side of my apartment door, wearing her nonthreatening look, I'd hide under my bed. But hey, that's me.

The door opened with the security chain in place and Briggs peeked out at Lula.

"Howdy," Lula said. "I'm from downstairs, and I got a petition for you to sign on account of they're gonna raise our rent."

"I didn't hear anything about a rent raise," Briggs said. "I didn't get any notice."

"Well, they're gonna do it all the same," Lula said.

"Sons of bitches," Briggs said. "They're always doing something in this building. I don't know why I stay here."

"Cheap rent?" Lula asked.

The door closed, the chain slid off, and the door opened wide.

"Hey!" Briggs said when Lula and I pushed past him into the apartment. "You can't just barge in like this. You tricked me."

"Look again," Lula said. "We're bounty hunters. We can barge if we want to. We got rights."

"You have
no
rights," Briggs said. "It's a bogus charge. I was carrying a ceremonial knife. It was engraved."

"A ceremonial knife," Lula said. "Seems like a little dude like you should be able to carry a ceremonial knife."

"Exactly," Randy said. "I'm unjustly accused."

" 'Course it don't matter," Lula said. "You still gotta go to the pokey with us."

"I'm in the middle of a big project. I don't have time."

"Hmmm," Lula said. "Let me explain to you how this works. Bottom line is, we don't give a doody."

Briggs pressed his lips together and folded his arms tight across his chest. "You can't make me go."

"Sure we can," Lula said. "You're just a little pipsqueak. We could make you sing 'Yankee Doodle' if we wanted. 'Course, we wouldn't do that on account of we're professionals."

I pulled a pair of cuffs out of my back pocket and clamped one of the bracelets on Briggs.

Briggs looked at the cuff like it was the flesh-eating virus. "What's this?"

"Nothing to be alarmed about," I said. "Standard procedure."

"Eeeeeeeee," Briggs shrieked. "Eeeeeeeee."

"Stop that!" Lula yelled. "You sound like a girl. You're creeping me out."

He was running around the room now, waving his arms and still shrieking. "Eeeeeeeee."

"Get a grip!" Lula said.

"Eeeeeeee."

I made a grab for the cuff but missed. "Stand still," I ordered.

Briggs bolted past Lula, who was dumbstruck, rooted to the floor, and then ran out the door.

"Get him," I yelled, rushing at Lula. "Don't let him get away!" I pushed her into the hall, and we thundered down the stairs after Briggs.

Briggs sprinted through the small lobby, through the front door, and into the parking lot.

"Well, damn," Lula said, "I can hear his little feet going, but I can't see him. He's lost in between all these cars."

We separated and walked into the lot, Lula going one way and me the other. We stopped and listened for footsteps when we got to the outer perimeter.

"I don't hear him anymore," Lula said. "He must be going tippytoe."

We started to walk back when we saw Briggs round the corner of the apartment building and race inside.

"Holy cow!" Lula said. "He's going back to his apartment."

We ran across the lot, barreled through the door, and took the stairs two at a time. When we got to Briggs' apartment the door was closed and locked.

"We know you're in there," Lula yelled. "You better open this door."

"You can huff and you can puff, but you'll never get through this door," Briggs said.

"The hell we won't," Lula told him. "We could shoot the lock off. And then we're gonna come in there and root you out like a rodent."

No answer.

"Hello?" Lula called.

We listened at the door and heard the computer boot up. Briggs was going back to work.

"Nothing I hate more than a wise-ass dwarf," Lula said, hauling a .45 out of her purse. "Stand back. I'm gonna blast this door open."

Drilling Briggs' door held a lot of appeal, but probably it wasn't practical to shoot up an apartment building for a guy who was only worth seven hundred dollars.

"No shooting," I said. "I'll get the key from the super."

"That isn't gonna do you no good if you're not willing to shoot," Lula said. "He's still gonna have the security chain on."

"I saw Ranger pop a door open with his shoulder."

Lula looked at the door. "I could do that too," she said. "Only I just bought this dress with them little spaghetti straps, and I wouldn't want to have a bruise."

I looked at my watch. "It's almost five, and I'm having dinner with my parents tonight."

"Maybe we should do this some other time."

"We're leaving," I hollered through Briggs' door, "but we'll be back. And you'd better be careful of those handcuffs. They cost me forty dollars."

"We would have been justified to shoot our way in on account of he's in possession of stolen property," Lula said.

"Do you always carry a gun?" I asked Lula.

"Don't everybody?"

"They released Benito Ramirez two days ago."

Lula stumbled on the second step down. "That's not possible."

"Joe told me."

"Piece-of-shit legal system."

"Be careful."

"Hell," Lula said. "He already cut me. You're the one who has to be careful."

We swung through the door and stopped in our tracks.

"Uh-oh," Lula said. "We got company."

It was Bunchy. He was parked behind us in the lot. And he didn't look happy.

"How do you suppose he found us?" Lula asked. "We aren't even in your car."

"He must have followed us from the office."

"I didn't see him. And I was looking."

"I didn't see him either."

"He's good," Lula said. "He might be someone to worry about."

"HOW'S THE POT roast?" my mother wanted to know. "Is it too dry?"

"It's fine," I told her. "Just like always."

"I got the green bean casserole recipe from Rose Molinowski. It's made with mushroom soup and bread crumbs."

"Whenever there's a wake or a christening, Rose always brings this casserole," Grandma said. "It's her signature dish."

My father looked up from his plate. "Signature dish?"

"I got that from the shopper's channel on TV. All the big designers got signature this and that."

My father shook his head and bent lower over his pot roast.

Grandma helped herself to some of the casserole. "How's the manhunt going? You got any good leads on Fred yet?"

"Fred is a dead end. I've talked to his sons and his girlfriend. I've retraced his last steps. I've talked to Mabel. There's nothing. He's disappeared without a trace."

My father muttered something that sounded a lot like "lucky bastard" and continued to eat.

My mother rolled her eyes.

And Grandma spooned in some beans. "We need one of them psychics," Grandma said. "I saw on television where you can call them up, and they know everything. They find dead people all the time. I saw a couple of them on a talk show, and they were saying how they help the police with these serial murder cases. I was watching that show, and I was thinking that if I was a serial murderer I'd chop the bodies up in little pieces so those psychics wouldn't have such an easy job of it. Or maybe I'd drain all the blood out of the body and collect it in a big bucket. Then I'd bury a chicken, and I'd take the victim's blood and make a trail to the chicken. Then the psychic wouldn't know what to make of it when the police dug up a chicken." Grandma helped herself to the gravy boat and poured gravy over her pot roast. "Do you think that'd work?"

Everyone but Grandma paused with forks in midair.

"Well, I wouldn't bury a
live
chicken," Grandma said.

No one had much to say after that, and I felt myself nodding off halfway through my second piece of cake.

"You look all done in," Grandma said. "Guess getting blown up takes it out of you."

"I didn't get much sleep last night."

"Maybe you want to take a nap while your grandmother and I clean up," my mother said. "You can use the guest room."

Ordinarily, I'd excuse myself and go home early, but tonight Bunchy was sitting across the street, two houses down, in the Dodge. So leaving early didn't appeal to me. What appealed to me was to make Bunchy's night as long as possible.

My parents have three bedrooms. My grandma Mazur sleeps in my sister's room, and my room is used as a guest room. Of course, I'm the only guest who ever uses the guest room. All my parents' friends and family live within a five-mile radius and have no reason to stay overnight. I also live within five miles, but I've been known to have the occasional disaster that sends me in search of temporary residence. So my bathrobe hangs in the guest room closet.

"Maybe just a short nap," I said. "I'm really tired."

THE SUN WAS slanting through the break in the curtains when I woke up. I had a moment of disorientation, wondering if I was late for school, and then realized I'd been out of school for a lot of years, and that I'd crawled into bed for a short nap and ended up sleeping through the night.

I rolled out of bed fully dressed and shuffled down to the kitchen. My mother was making vegetable soup, and my grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper, scrutinizing the obituaries.

Grandma looked up when I came in. "Weren't you at the garbage company yesterday, checking on Fred?"

I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat across from her. "Yep."

"It says here this woman, Martha Deeter, who was the receptionist at RGC, was shot to death last night. Says they found her in the parking lot of her apartment building." Grandma slid the paper over to me. "Got a picture of her and everything."

I stared goggle-eyed at the picture. It was Martha, all right. With the way she was going at it with her office mate, I'd expected she might have fingerprint marks on her neck. A bullet in the brain never occurred to me.

"Says she's being laid out at Stiva's tomorrow night," Grandma said. "We should go on account of it was our garbage company."

The Catholic church held bingo parties only twice a week, so Grandma and her friends enlarged their social life by attending viewings.

"No suspects," I said, reading the article. "The police think it was robbery. Her purse was missing."

THE BROWN DODGE was still parked down the street when I left my parents' house. Bunchy was asleep behind the wheel, his head back, mouth open. I rapped on the window, and he jumped awake.

"Shit," he said, "what time is it?"

"Were you here all night?"

"Sure looks like it."

Looked like it to me, too. He looked even worse than usual. He had dark circles under his eyes, he needed a shave, and his hair looked like it had been styled by a stun gun.

"So, you didn't kill anybody last night?"

Bunchy blinked at me. "Not that I remember. Who bought the farm?"

"Martha Deeter. She worked at RGC Waste Haulers."

"Why would I want to kill her?"

"I don't know. I saw it in the paper this morning and just thought I'd ask."

"Never hurts to ask," Bunchy said.

I LET MYSELF into my apartment and saw the light flashing on my phone machine.

"Hey, Babe," Ranger said, "got a job for you."

The second message was from Benito Ramirez. "Hello, Stephanie," he said. Quiet-voiced. Articulate, as always. "I've been away for a little while . . . as you know." There was a pause and in my mind I could see his eyes. Small for his face and terrifyingly insane. "I came by to see you, but you weren't at home. That's okay. I'll try some other time." He gave a small, girlish giggle and disconnected.

I erased Ranger's message and saved Ramirez's. Probably I should have a restraining order issued. Ordinarily I didn't hold much stock in restraining orders, but in this case, if Ramirez continued to harass me I might be able to get his parole revoked.

I connected with Ranger on his car phone. "What's the job?" I asked.

"Chauffeur. I have a young sheik flying in to Newark at five."

"He carrying drugs? Delivering guns?"

"Negative. He's visiting relatives in Bucks County. Long weekend. Probably he won't even blow himself up."

"What's the catch?"

"No catch. You wear a black suit and white shirt. You meet him at the gate and escort him safely to his destination."

"I guess that sounds okay."

"You'll be driving a Town Car. You can pick it up at the garage on Third and Marshall. Be there at three o'clock and talk to Eddie."

"Anything else?"

"Make sure you're dressed."

"You mean the suit—"

"I mean the gun."

"Oh."

I disconnected and went back to Fred's photos. I spread the color copies out on the table just as I did the first time. Two of the pictures were of the bag all tied up. I was guessing that was how Fred found it. He took a couple pictures, then he opened the bag. The big question was, did he know what was inside before he opened it, or was it a surprise?

I went upstairs to Mrs. Bestler, who had failing eyesight, and borrowed a magnifying glass. I returned to my apartment, took the pages closer to the window, and looked at them with the glass. The glass wasn't much help, but I was almost sure it was a woman. Short dark hair. No jewelry on her right hand. There seemed to be newspapers crumpled into the bag with her. A crime lab might be able to pick something out to help date the photo. The bag with the woman was sitting with other bags. I could count four. They were on asphalt. Garbage stacked outside a business, maybe. A business too small to need a Dumpster. Lots of those around. Or it could be a driveway belonging to a family who made tons of garbage.

Part of a building was visible in the background. Hard to tell what it was. It was out of focus and in shade. A stucco wall was my best guess.

That was all the pictures were going to offer up to me.

I took a shower, scrounged for lunch, and set off to talk to Mabel.

I LEFT MY building with more caution than usual, keeping my eyes open for Ramirez. I reached the Buick and was almost disappointed not to have been accosted. On the one hand, it'd be good to get the confrontation over with. On the other hand . . . I didn't want to think about the other hand.

Bunchy wasn't there, either. I had mixed feelings about this, too. Bunchy was a pain in the behind, and I had no idea who he was, but I thought he might be good to have around if Ramirez attacked me. Better Bunchy than Ramirez. I don't know why I felt like that. For all I knew, Bunchy was the butcher.

I chugged out of the lot and drove on autopilot to Mabel's house, trying to prioritize projects. I had to neutralize Ramirez, get to the bottom of the Fred thing, chauffeur some sheik . . . And I felt uncomfortable about the dead garbage lady. Not to mention, I needed shoes for Saturday night. I lined everything up in my mind. The shoes were, hands down, top priority. Okay, so sometimes I wasn't the world's greatest bounty hunter. I wasn't a fabulous cook. I didn't have a boyfriend, much less a husband. And I wasn't a big financial success. I could live with all those failings as long as I knew that once in a while I looked really hot. And Saturday night I was going to look hot. So I needed shoes and a new dress.